Category Archives: Dystopian

Teaser Tuesday (May 22): Under the Never Sky

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Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My teaser today comes from Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi.

“‘Please! I didn’t do anything!’

A Guardian came up behind her. She caught a glimpse of him as his foot crashed into the small of her back, and then she was falling through the air.”

– Page 67

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? (May 21)

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Welcome to another week of It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? hosted by Book Journey: the part of the week where I set ridiculously lofty goals for myself that I nearly always fail to achieve. But that doesn’t stop me from setting the bar high, because it would seem I am bad at learning my lesson. Speaking of which…

Guys, I have a confession to make.

I failed miserably last week. Failed. With a capital F-A-I-L.

I set out to read at least four books. I read one. ONE. Uno. The Book Thief was just a much heavier read than I was anticipating, and it swallowed my week. Plus, of course, life kept getting in the way. I went to an author event. I saw The Avengers. There were even more birthday parties (seriously, were all the children in my kids’ classes born in April and May?)

But instead of moving all of last week’s reads to this week, I’m changing it up. I’ve been asked to do a guest post on my friend Kelly’s blog in a couple weeks about dystopian books. And to prepare, I need to read some more dystopians. I’ve read some, but I need to read more. I know there’s no way I can read all the dystopians in two weeks, but I can at least put a bigger dent in them.

First off, I have to finish Angel Eyes by Shannon Dittemore. That will probably happen today, and I’m excited to announce that Shannon (who is ridiculously nice, FYI) has also agreed to an author interview sometime in the very near future when I can get my act together. So be on the lookout for that!

Then, TWO WEEKS OF DYSTOPIAN FUN. I may need a reality check when this is all over, people. On the docket for this week:

Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi. I’m so pumped. I’ve been itching to read this one for months.

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness. I honestly have no idea what I’m getting into with this one, but I’ve heard great things.

The Maze Runner by James Dashner. Again, heard great things. Again, so pumped.

The Glimpse by Claire Merle. There aren’t an abundance of reviews out yet for this one, as it’s a June 2012 release, and what I’ve read so far have been severely mixed. Some love it, some vehemently hate it. So this one could be interesting. We’ll see.

I am banking on the fact that YA dystopians tend to go pretty fast. Plus, I do not have ALL THE ACTIVITIES planned for this week. Although my children do finish school tomorrow, which means the second half of my week is going to be kid-filled and chaotic. I’m hoping I can somehow squeeze in some reading around….that.

I need to get through these this week though, because I have some more potentially awesome dystopians planned for next week!

And yes, I know I’m setting myself up for some minor frustration by reading only book 1 of a bunch of trilogies. But a girl can only fit so much into two weeks. Books 2 and 3 can wait. I hope.

Off I go to mess with my sense of reality.

Review: The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa (@jkagawa @HarlequinTeen)

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When I picked up The Immortal Rules, I thought I knew what I was getting into. I haven’t read Julie Kagawa’s highly praised Iron Fey series (YET), but I gathered from the reviews that Ms. Kagawa is a great writer with engaging characters. I also knew that The Immortal Rules was a vampire dystopian, so I was prepared for kind of a Hunger-Games-meets-Twilight book.

Um, no.

I probably should have gathered from the creepy cover (that I still don’t like, even though I now understand it) that this book was going to be darker than that. It makes The Hunger Games look positively mild, and the Twilight vampires would be reduced to trembling granite-hard puddles of sparkly fear in the face of the beasties in The Immortal Rules.

A better mashup comparison would probably be Interview-With-a-Vampire-meets-I-am-Legend. It’s the internal struggle between man (or in this case, woman) and monster, set in a world where plague has decimated humanity and horrifying creatures like this (but scarier) roam the planet.

The Plot

In a future world where plague has wiped out most of the human population, vampires rule supreme. Allison Sekemoto lives on the fringes of a vampire city, struggling to survive from  day to day with no parents or food.

One day, desperate from hunger, Allison ventures outside the walls of the vampire city in search of food. Venturing outside the walls is dangerous and possibly deadly, as the open area surrounding the city is haunted by rabids — once-human creatures turned insane and bloodthirsty by the plague. If the rabids notice her, they will tear her to pieces.

But Allison’s risk pays off when she discovers a huge cache of untouched food. She hurriedly brings the rest of her small gang back to scavenge it, when it all goes horribly wrong.

They are attacked by rabids. Allison herself is mercilessly ravaged, to the point of death, when suddenly a mysterious figure appears. A vampire. He offers her a choice: Die a human. Or rise a vampire.

Allison chooses a new existence as a vampire. And then she is forced to deal with the consequences of that decision.

Her situation is further complicated when she is driven from the city to wander the wilderness alone. She meets up with a small group of humans searching for something impossible — a city without vampires. As she hides her true nature from them, she struggles between her desire to retain her humanity and the Hunger that threatens to consume her, always conscious of the fact that if she denies herself human blood for too long, she will go mad.

My Thoughts 

First off, this book is dark, people. D-A-R-K. There is a lot of death. A lot of violence. And the feel of the world that Ms. Kagawa has created is bleak and hopeless and terrifying. I would not recommend this one for the faint of heart.

That said, I actually loved this book. I know it seems kind of weird that I’d love something I just described as “hopeless and terrifying,” especially since I’m not normally one to go for that sort of thing. But the writing is vivid and engaging, and had me sucked in from the first page.

The world is extremely well planned and developed. I understood the intricacies of the vampire mythology, and how the world came to be this way. I really felt like I was there in the dirty city, and then out in the open wilderness with Allison.

Allison is a bit of an anti-hero, in that she spends the majority of the book struggling to avoid killing everyone around her. Her internal struggle between the kind of person she wants to be and the monster she realizes she is, is fascinating and heartbreaking.

There are moments of bittersweet tenderness followed directly by heart-pounding (or…not…in Allison’s case) action. There is a love story (not a triangle, thankfully) that is sweet and impossible and heartbreaking. There are characters that you want to hate that you kind of like, and characters that you want to like that you kind of hate.

It’s a nuanced and fascinating book, creating a frighteningly believable world where darkness rules, and clinging to even a small glimmer of hope and happiness seems naive. It makes most other YA dystopians seem downright utopian.

And yet, even though Allison is a monster, she fights to be human. Even though the humans are searching for the impossible, they continue to search. And even though hope seems foolish, we do it anyway.

The Immortal Rules is the first book in a new series, and I will be very interested to see what happens next in Allison’s journey.

Content guide: contains extreme violence, deaths, some strong language, suspense, and an overall sense of foreboding and hopelessness.

I received The Immortal Rules as a digital review copy from NetGalley.

Review: Insurgent by Veronica Roth (@VeronicaRoth @harperteen)

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Wow. Okay. I just finished Insurgent, the highly anticipated second book in Veronica Roth’s Divergent trilogy, and I’ve got to say…it’s good. It’s really good. In my opinion, better than Divergent. Let me try to get my thoughts in order and explain why.

The Story 

Insurgent picks up right where Divergent ends: on a train after the world has come crashing down around protagonist Tris Prior. The factions have turned on each other, and have taken massive casualties on all sides. Tris herself is reeling from the deaths of several close friends and family members, one of which was at her hands.

Tris and her boyfriend Tobias, a.k.a. “Four,” flee to the Amity headquarters, hoping to take refuge among the peaceful. But it quickly becomes clear that Amity and Dauntless don’t mix well.

As Tris, Four and their ragtag band of allies and enemies ping-pong around the different factions, a war breaks out. Sides are taken, lives are lost, and Tris and Four are right in the middle.

But Tris’ main concern isn’t with picking sides in the war. She just wants to know why they’re fighting a war in the first place.

My Thoughts

Like Divergent, Insurgent is a mile-a-minute roller coaster of a book. There is tons of edge-of-your-seat action and suspense that starts near the beginning of the book and doesn’t stop until the last page.

However, Insurgent takes what Divergent had going for it and takes it to a new level. The stakes are higher, the action is grander, and the payoff is bigger. In the first book, we watch as Tris discovers her inner Dauntless. She performs a lot of stunts that, from my boring-adult perspective, are reckless and stupid, and serve no purpose. However, that recklessness and fearlessness actually comes in handy in Insurgent, where her goals are far loftier than just making it into a horribly superficial faction and impressing a boy.

The love story between Tris and Four is definitely present throughout the book, but it’s not the main focus. It develops around the big events surrounding the characters, and does not usurp them, which is good. They’re both concerned with saving the world, and both realize that’s more important than their relationship drama. A good realization to have, especially when you remember that they are still both teenagers.

There are a lot of deaths in Insurgent. It’s like Deathly Hallows and Mockingjay all over again. No one is safe. On the one hand, I hate when authors kill off good characters (especially when the nasty ones survive), because it hurts my little reader feelings. On the other hand, it really helps me not to become complacent as a reader when I realize that any of these characters could die at any time. There’s not that feeling of, “well, this situation kinda sucks, but you know it’ll be okay because there’s no way she’d kill off that character.” Nope, she would kill off that character. She proved it in Divergent, and it’s even more prevalent in Insurgent.

As for Tris herself, I liked her a lot more in this book. She grew up a lot. She made more mature decisions, causing me to see for the first time that she really may have some aptitude for Abnegation (something I didn’t see at all in the first book). She still did some stupid things and made some poor choices, but it was nice to generally see her acting more reasonably and not just out of spite or anger or recklessness.

I also liked that she spent the entire book dealing with the consequences of her actions in the first book. I was concerned she would recover too quickly from the events in Divergent, but she dealt with them throughout the book. She had psychological trauma and battle scars. It made her seem a lot more real.

And remember all those questions I had about Divergent? How a lot of things weren’t explained and didn’t make sense and I hoped they would be explained in the next book? Well, they were. I didn’t even realize that we were going to get answers to those questions until I read the last chapter, and then boom, there they were. Not 100%, because this is book #2 in a trilogy and having all my questions answered would be an unreasonable expectation. But they were addressed, the answers were heavily hinted at, and I now have little doubt that we’ll get much more satisfying explanations in book #3.

All in all, I thought Insurgent was a great follow-up to Divergent. It was more thrilling, more mature, and generally more satisfying. I’m excited to see where it goes in what is sure to be an explosive finale.

Content Guide: Contains violence and numerous deaths, and mild sexual content.

Teaser Reviews: Glitch and Timepiece

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I recently finished reading the digital review copies of Glitch and Timepiece, and while I won’t be posting full reviews until closer to the release dates, I wanted to give you a taste of my thoughts.

First up, Glitch by Heather Anastasiu (release date: August 7, 2012):

Premise: In a futuristic society, humans have been purged of their emotions via technology implanted into their brain stems. Logic and duty reign supreme. However, when Zoe starts “glitching” — i.e. experiencing emotion — her world begins to fall apart. Does she turn herself into the Regulators to be “fixed?” Or does she attempt to break free of the orderly yet oppressive system, to lead a normal life and fall in love?

Why I liked it: Glitch is full of fun sci-fi action, superpowers, and crazy twists and turns. It’s a fun ride, kind of like an action movie or a roller coaster. You’re not going to come out having lots of Deep Thoughts after this one, but it kept me entertained for a couple nights, most of the characters were enjoyable, and I am always a fan of superpowers and futuristic technology.

Danger, Will Robinson: There is a love triangle in this one, and I hated — hated — one of the participants. So that’s always frustrating. Also, if you like your sci-fi served up with a hefty dose of it-could-kinda-maybe-happen scientific techno-talk, à la Michael Crichton, this is not the book for you. Disbelief must be suspended, and in a big way.

Next, Timepiece by Myra McEntire (release date June 12, 2012):

Premise: Timepiece picks up pretty much where Hourglass left off. (Haven’t read Hourglass yet? Go order it RIGHT NOW. Or pick it up from the library. You’ll be glad you did.) This time, the narrator is Kaleb Ballard, a minor player in Hourglass and Michael’s best friend. Kaleb is a charming but irresponsible womanizing drunk at the start of the book. However, when a new mysterious bad guy comes to demand that the Hourglass hand over the devious Jack Landers — or else — Kaleb finds himself swept up in ancient plots, legendary prizes, and the task of possibly saving the world.

Why I liked LOVED it: I need to be careful, or I will write an essay on how much I loved this book. And this is just supposed to be a teaser. So first off: Kaleb is awesome. He doesn’t start awesome. I wanted to punch him in the face. But he quickly becomes awesome. The secondary characters are fabulous. I was especially pleased that Lily, Emerson’s barista best friend from Hourglass, gets a lot more face time in Timepiece. Jack Landers is a deliciously horrible villain. And the time-slippy action and the twisty-turny plot is just incredible. There were several developments I just did not see coming, and that was a good thing. I can’t wait for the next book. Too bad this one’s not even out yet…

I’ll post full reviews when we’re closer to release, but if either of these pique your interest, go pre-order on Amazon, put them on hold at your library, or (if you’re a reviewer), go try to snatch them from NetGalley!